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I'm the person Len mentioned who is working on cultural heritage issues,
and feel compelled to join the discussion.
From a scholarly research and educational perspective, we are getting
closer to the solutions than many people think. This is XML-DEV, a
markup list, and not necessarily the place for protracted discussions
about the pros and cons of 3D visualization, but the thread seems to
continue so I am jumping in.
. The North Dakota State University (NDSU), Archaeology Technologies
Laboratory (ATL), and the World Wide Web Instructional Committee
(WWWIC), as well as our collaborators in OASIS HumanML and HPCDML, and
elsewhere, e.g., ASU Partnership for Research in Stereo Modeling (PRISM)
), Physiome.org's (BioMedical Engineering Group, Bioengineering
Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand) Anatomical Markup
Language (AnatML) and CMISS projects, (and yet other collaborators
further afield) are working on a number of the issues about Web-based
access to 3D models and virtual environments and query/retrieval of
associated contextual information from distributed, enterprise-level,
relational database management system networks.
The Digital Archive Network for Anthropology and World Heritage
(DANA-WH), in particular, is designed to address quite a few of these
issues, but not all, with regard for preservation of and access to
digital content of relevance to human biological and cultural heritage .
We are also developing Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) for
education (e.g., at NDSU: the Virtual Cell, Geology Explorer, and
Virtual Archaeologist), as well as virtual museum exhibits, etc. Each
(all) of these projects require markup for both 3D objects and the
associated contextual information warehoused in databases. You can't
simply have 3D models or virtual worlds without providing a means for
explaining the context, and in the education and research arenas, this
is a critical factor that determines the success or failure of a
project. That is to say, the target audience(s) must glean demonstrable
knowledge increase through the use of the application. That is the big
difference between an educational game and, for example, an
entertainment video game, but the same technologies apply in both
fields. Making something both entertaining and educationally viable is
a good mix, but the development curve is steep and expensive, as
mentioned previously by others contributing to this thread. Melding, for
example, archaeology, in a virtual environment, and adding to that the
disciplinary rigors makes of a dual immersive environment- one that
virtually immerses a student in a disciplinary venue as well as a
visually appealing and informative virtual world, through which the
student can glean a better understanding of the past and simultaneously
garner a better understanding of how and why archaeologists study past
life ways, etc. To display a 3D model of an object out of context,
without also providing the associated data (the contextual information),
i.e., simply displaying a pretty picture, is a disservice, at least in
the academic arena. We take it further than that, we build the tools for
further analysis, including virtual calipers for measurement of objects,
and also provide means for users to log their experiences and notes,
etc.,. as well as take snapshots along the way.
Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
<clipped majority of previous discussion>
>Not oddly, one of the
>HumanML
>members is working that from the aspect of museums, AnthML and so on.
>
--
From the Desk of James E. Landrum III
Database Manager
Archaeology Technologies Laboratory (ATL; http://atl.ndsu.edu)
Digital Archive Network for Anthropology and World Heritage (DANA-WH; http://atl.ndsu.edu/archive; http://www.dana-wh.net)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota 58105
Ph: 701-231-7115 (my desk) and ATL 701-231-6434
FAX: 701-231-1047
email: james.landrum@ndsu.nodak.edu
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